


Locomotive Breath

by The_Exile



Category: Gynoug | Wings of Wor, The Railway Series - W. Awdry
Genre: Crack, Crossover, Gen, Mild Horror, everything can be crossed with Gynoug, unsuitable for small children
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-24
Updated: 2013-06-28
Packaged: 2017-12-15 23:39:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/855290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Exile/pseuds/The_Exile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While wrestling with his personal demons late one sleepless night, Thomas meets a new friend and goes on an exciting adventure in a world with real demons that leaves him feeling much better!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. An Unexpected Guest

Midnight tolled, heralding the witching hour and the time for the train station to close. Thomas and his friends slept in the depot. A raven called. Its mournful cry echoed around the tall, hollow walls of the train yard, waking Thomas up from his dark dreams. While he was normally satisfied by a day's hard work and the smiles of his passengers, he had grown increasingly restless of late. Tonight was one more night in almost a week when he simply could not fall asleep.

Thomas hated being unable to sleep. He wasn't sure why he was capable of remaining conscious when all his mechanical parts were switched off but he wished it would stop happening. The sensation of being fully awake and entirely unable to operate his own body was mentally unbearable for the normally jolly little engine, rather like a type of sensory deprivation, or maybe the sleep paralysis that came with night terrors. For some reason, his face, the only part of him that was not train-like, could still move, so he swivelled his eyes so that he could watch the carrion birds wheeling gracefully in the moonlit sky through the thin slit of the window. He wondered why birds were allowed to be free, even when they were guilty of looting battlefields, which he was fairly certain was punishable by execution among humans, and yet he was doomed to always follow the same fixed, narrow paths, over and over again, for the rest of his life. Were he re-allocated to a different line – which hadn't happened in decades – he would just be travelling to and from a slightly different place in a circle all day, on the tracks his wheels could never leave, his shackles, his predestinate grooves. Although they knew full well he and his railway friends were sentient beings and should be given full human rights, not just treated like other trains, the Fat Controller and his minions refused to do anything about it. They simply said that a train had to run on tracks or it wouldn't be a train. Even the lowest slaves were allowed to move their feet slightly to one side, and yet, just because he had been born a train, he was expected to accept such a cruel fate!

As he pondered the cursed nature of his existence, the little steam engine was taken quite by surprise by a ragged crack of thunder and a blinding flash of lightning. Oh dear, thought Thomas, I hope the lightning doesn't hit our roof! Switched off as he was, he had no away of escaping. He fixed his eyes on the roof, awaiting the next strike so that he could judge how close the storm was. That was when he saw it: a winged shadow, far too large to be a bird and entirely the wrong shape in any case! It swooped low overhead then disappeared from view. Seconds later, another peal of thunder boomed across the courtyard and the heavy iron door was flung open. Sillhouetted against the next flash of lightning was a train he had never met before!

* * *

“Gordon?” whispered Thomas, feeling sorry to wake the other engines up after their long day at work but knowing that he should warn them about the eerie shadows and the mysterious trespasser, “Bertie? Is this a friend of yours? Is anyone awake? Is anyone here at all? Hello? Anyone?”

“Excuse me, I think I'm a bit lost. Is this the Heavens, where the angel Wor lives?” asked the stranger. His voice came out as a distorted crackle, like the Fat Controller's old radio when he was trying to get a signal on it but with less frustrated swearing in the background. As well as having an odd voice, he was a peculiar-looking engine to say the least! He had an entirely human head, not just human facial features, although he still looked different to all the humans Thomas had met. He was bald, with ghoulish dark blue skin, joining to the rest of the train by pipes connected to his ears. His teeth were clenched in a tight grimace as though he really needed to go to the bathroom but had just pulled into a station. He also had giant human hands that he used to manually push the pistons. He looked very rusty and leaky, not well maintained at all, and the condition of his face reminded Thomas a little of a zombie from a horror film that the Fat Controller described to him once.

“I don't think so, could I see your map?” Thomas replied, eager to help anyone who was polite to him, even a midnight trespasser. The engine reached into his driver's cabin with one hand and pulled out a map. Thomas studied it briefly. With his extensive knowledge of travel networks to and from the Island, gleaned through a lifetime of servitude, he soon saw the answer. 

“Oh, I see your mistake, you should have changed at Manchester,” Thomas told him, “You look tired. Do you want to rest here? You're not really allowed to, but it's very dangerous to go on the track in the middle of a storm, so I'm sure the Fat Controller would understand!” And he might be able to get you looked at by a decent mechanic, thought Thomas, but he said nothing, as it would be rude to comment on a stranger engine's state of disrepair.

“I'm sorry, but I must complete my mission by daybreak, or Iccus will be very cross!”

“Oh, trains are delayed by lightning all the time,” Thomas reassured him, “I'm sure nobody will mind. Although, I'm surprised your service hasn't been cancelled by now.”

“This mission is too important to be cancelled by a mere storm. Wor left his suitcase on the luggage rack when he visited the demonic realm! I must return it to him at once or he will complain down the phone to Iccus, who will be very annoyed at being woken from his eternal sleep, where he is quite busy bending reality to the whim of his fevered dreams!"

“I'm sure a lot of the engines know how that feels,” said Thomas, rolling his eyes to observe his friends, who were still sound asleep, “They're cross when they get woken up, I mean, not the bit about bending reality. I'm not sure why they haven't been woken up by all the noise, though...”

“This is a magic storm, caused by the summoning ritual that allows demon trains like myself to enter the mundane world,” explained the engine, “I'm surprised you're here talking to me now. Normally, any mortal to witness it goes stark insane!”

“I fear that may be the case already,” said Thomas, a frown creasing his freakish human/train hybrid face, “After all, this is not the first night I have been unable to sleep, and it isn't like I can go for a brisk walk to clear my senses!”

“Would you like to come with me on the rest of my journey?” asked the engine, “We can meet Wor, I can finish my mission, then later I can show you around the Demonic Realm. Don't worry about the lightning, a magic storm can't harm trains, and the summoning ritual will distort the nature of space and time so that you can be home before the other engines wake up! Although it might also create an unresolvable paradox and destroy your personal timeline, erasing you from existence. But that hardly ever happens!”

“Gosh, it sounds like a big adventure,” said Thomas, “I've never been to the Demonic Realm and I've never met a demon train before. And I haven't even told you my name! I'm Thomas. And you are...?”

“Locomotive Breath,” replied the demon train.

“That's a funny name for a train!”

“You should hear what the demon ship is called,” Locomotive Breath chuckled, “Doesn't have anything to do with ships whatsoever. I think Iccus was having an off day when he named us. Still, it's not done to keep the man waiting. I'm heading out now. Are you with me or not?”


	2. The Delivery

“Well, I've never talked to him in person, but I've seen plenty of statues of him!” admitted the demon train as the two little engines chugged along the track that materialised in the tumultuous sky. A tunnel of dark grey clouds veined with sheets of lightning surrounded them. Thomas sounded his whistle to announce that he was going through the tunnel, even though he didn't have any passengers that he knew of. Tunnels were dark and scary, especially when they were full of lightning, and the whistle cheered him up.

“He must be a famous person,” said Thomas.

“He's the last survivor of his race,” said Locomotive Breath, “All the rest have been turned into Undead mutant demons.”

“That's awfully sad!”

“Not really. Lots of people like being an Undead Mutant Demon. You can get a twenty percent discount with an Undead Mutant Demon Railcard. In fact, you should seriously consider becoming a demon yourself!”

“I don't need a Railcard. I'm a train. I can travel for free. In fact, I should probably be getting paid,” Thomas was glum when he was reminded of his unfair work situation. Why were the humans paid but not the other sentient beings?

The tunnel was receding now, the sporadic illumination of the lightning flashes giving way to the limpid silvery light of the moon and, somewhere far below, the flickering of flames, guttering from the white marble walls of what looked like a gigantic Cathedral that seemed to stretch out as far as Thomas could see. As he swivelled his eyes to try and capture the entire image in his view, a sinuous serpent almost the same size as the trains darted erratically past him in one direction before turning in mid-air and heading off in the other direction at an even greater speed. It had an almost skeletal human face and was laughing manically.

“Oh, that's Peeble!” said the engine, giving an excited toot of his whistle, “Hey, Peeble! Slow down or you'll crash into something!”

“But going fast is so much fun!” cackled the snake, “You get a good run-up and... WHEEEEE!”

“How do you get a run-up when you never actually land on the ground?” sighed Locomotive Breath, “Anyway, Peeble is supposed to be patrolling the area, so we must be nearly there!”

Watching nervously as Peeble darted a little too low overhead, the trains rolled down, down towards the ornate Gothic archways of the main gates to the Cathedral, which creaked open to admit them. Thomas gasped at the magnificence of the architecture in the building that was large enough to enclose an entire city. Gargoyles perched on top of flying buttresses and rows of hauntingly realistic statues lined the avenues in several floors of alcoves, some of beautiful Goddesses, others of imperious-looking gentlemen in flowing robes. However, like the demon train, it looked somewhat in disrepair. Foul-smelling green slime grew in the stagnant aqueducts, valuable-looking columns had toppled and many of the statues were missing from their pedestals. The last fact was soon explained away as one of the Gargoyles yawned, stretched and flew from one pillar to the next before tucking its head under its wing and falling asleep again.

“The statues wake up sometimes as well,” said Locomotive Breath, “You have to keep an eye out for them. They like to play tricks on people!”

Out of the corner of his eye, Thomas saw one of the statues raise its arm into the air. Seconds later, a fireball erupted from its hand and shot past, inches from his head.

“It's too hot in here,” said Locomotive Breath, “I shall have to tell Gark. He's like us, but a furnace. He can be a bit grumpy but he's proud of doing his job well.”

Thomas was impressed by how many things were alive and/or had a human face that normally wouldn't. Back on the Island, it was mostly just vehicles and things that could in some way be attached to vehicles, but here there were living statues, a talking furnace and he was even going to meet a real Angel! Thomas knew that magic existed – it was the reason why there were any sentient engines at all – and this felt like a place overflowing with magic. He puffed merrily as he followed his friend down the grand, sweeping corridors of the Cathedral, past the rain of swords and the crimson imps that clawed their way out of coffins. Soon he saw that the statues were changing from Gods and Goddesses into armoured men with eagle's wings that were outstretched as if in flight, their proud eyes staring at the heavens.

“Wor, I know you're in there somewhere, stop pretending to still be a statue!” called Locomotive Breath in a stern voice, “I've got your suitcase!”

The air seemed to ripple around the statues, as if reality itself was distorting under the pressure of the pent-up magic in the air, and suddenly there were not eight angelic statues, but seven statues surrounding one very real and alive Angel perched on the highest plinth of all, the centrepiece of the display. The demonic train fetched a suitcase from the First Class coach with one of his giant hands and threw it at the angel, who caught it mid-flight.

“Thank you,” said Wor, “I don't know what I would have done without that suitcase. All my scrolls were in there!”

“That's why you keep losing them so easily,” said Locomotive Breath.

“I'll try and manage them better in future,” promised Wor, “Hey, I'm learning on the job, okay? I'm only a trainee Angel.”

“If you were a demon, you would probably have some kind of cybernetic augmentation so your storage compartment could be inside your...” began the train, but the angel had already turned back into a statue, “Oh well, he never listens to reason. I must go back before it gets late and Orrpus worries about me! Orrpus is the head of the factory where we are made and repaired, and all the demonic machines love him. He will be so excited to learn that there are trains with faces on other planes of reality as well!”

"I'm excited too," admitted Thomas, although he was wondering what kind of factory thought this was the correct way of maintaining engines and, for that matter, buildings. He hoped that he would be brave enough to confront this 'Orrpus' fellow if he turned out not to be a nice man after all!


	3. Orrpus and the Factory

Thomas had been warned that the Demonic Factory was large but he hadn't expected it to be quite this enormous. The entirety of Sodor Island could have fit into it! The engines had to follow the lightning tunnels back into the sky, then further up until they were so high in the sky that Thomas saw aeroplanes leaving trails of vapour below them. The factory looked like it had been cobbled together from whatever the owners had found in the junkyard after they drank too much gin, including what looked unnervingly like the component parts of several dismantled tank engines set into the mish-mash of badly overlapping plates and spiders-webs of thick black cables. Foul black smoke belched through sets of brass pipes set into one end of the vaguely diamond-shaped station. The entrance was relatively small compared to the size of the factory and the two engines only just fit inside. Thomas had to shove aside swarms of giant ball-bearings that were hovering inside the tunnel mouth, making strange grating noises and bobbing up and down. As they entered the tunnel, two leering demonic faces mounted on mechanical torsos popped up on stands that emerged from the walls. 

“The half past midnight train has arrived on time!” the first announced in shrill, simian voices, “But there's a strange engine here station along with it, and the weird-looking thing could do with some repairs!”

How rude, thought Thomas, saying that I'm the weird-looking and faulty one, when the other train looks like it's falling apart! He didn't raise to the bait of the silly chattering things, however, as they were far too creepy and silly-looking to take seriously and it wasn't as if the trains at home didn't bicker constantly over who was in the best condition. 

“Maybe it's an intruder,” said the second, before screaming, “Intruder! Orrpus, intruder!”

“Oh, do be quiet,” ordered Locomotive Breath, before accelerating with a sharp whistle and a blast of steam. The tunnel forked and the demonic engine led Thomas down the right-hand path, into a much wider chamber. 

“Hi there, Loco!” yelled a voice that was dripping with thick layers of millennia of agonising undeath, but in a jovial way that reminded Thomas a little of the Fat Controller, if he had been an inhuman industrial aberration rather than a human. Most of his front torso and head looked like a portly human being, except that he was fused through his flesh with some kind of steam-powered machine (Thomas decided that it was an adding machine like the one that the clerk at the station reception desk used) that covered his back, and he had no legs, only a barbed tail that protruded from his exposed spinal cord. His disembodied heart appeared to be floating around him. He looked as though someone had tried to build a steam-augmented human being and lost interest halfway through.

“Somebody give us a hand, would you?”

At Orrpus' instruction, a school of around fifteen disembodied hands swooped down from where they had been nesting inside a chute. They lifted up the lid of a compartment of Orrpus' machine and each took out a tool. Armed with hammers, wrenches, rivet guns, blow-torches and things Thomas didn't recognise at all, they began work on the construction of whatever Orrpus was working on. It looked a little like a new engine except with more tentacles.

“Thomas, this is Orrpus. Orrpus, this is Thomas, my new friend who I met in the mortal realm.”

“It's pronounced Orrrrrpus. Like a cat's purr,” said the monstrosity, doing his best to creep Thomas out with the accurate rendition of a purring cat coming from his steam-powered voicebox, “I need to fix your voice modulator again. And you... what are you supposed to be, a packing crate?”

“I beg your pardon?” said Thomas, suddenly cross. His fragile sanity was already overtaxed from his voyage among the denizens of abyssal chaos and he was having quite enough of being treated as though he was the abnormal one!

“I am an engine, and a very fine hard-working engine who has, as a matter of fact, just had a brand new coat of paint, although it is quite ruined by now with all this green slime and black smoke and would you PLEASE get that heart to stop bleeding everywhere?” yelled Thomas, “This place is a mess, it is in terrible condition, these machines are only half built and the faces look like they haven't been out in the sun or had a good night's sleep for years! Have you been working them too many night shifts? And do something about the acoustics in here, all the distorted screams are giving me a headache!”

“Humph, you just don't understand art!” replied Orrpus, turning up what was left of his nose in disdain, “Not finished? Do you know what it means when something's finished, son? It means it can't be improved any more! It means that's as good as it will ever get! My creations are constantly improving and growing with every new inspiration I have!”

“Please don't get angry, Orrpus,” said Locomotive Breath, slowly backing away to avoid being sprayed by an increasingly frenetic disembodied heart that was now windmilling around the enraged factory director, “I told you, he's a foreigner! He's from a completely different realm of existence!”

“Do you really not have change in the mundane realm, son?” asked Orrpus.

“Of course we do, but if you have too much change, you can't have any stability, then nothing gets done because nobody knows what's going to happen when. Why, the half past midnight train couldn't run if the timetable was organised this badly. All the trains would have to guess when to leave the station, and they might all try and leave the station at once, or decide not to leave at all!” said Thomas, “What I want to know is, how can you even exist if you're made of so much chaos? How do you even stay together, or know what you are or how you work?”

“What about you, son? Trains with human faces aren't possible. How can living engines such as you exist in a world of so much order and logic?”

“Orrpus, there was a very powerful reaction in the place where I met Thomas. I think there was a large concentration of magic in the air. I didn't find anything more than small doses of magic anywhere else in the mortal realm!”

“So, you're a special train, eh?”

“I think so,” admitted Thomas. 

“You'd better go back to your own world, then. I think you're part of a big change waiting to happen, and I can't leave you waiting!” purred Orrpus, “Listen, son, your world is very different to ours. It has different rules, and things that are good for your world can be bad for mine. Or the other way round. That's no reason for us to fight, though.”

“I'm sorry I snapped at you. It's been a long night and I haven't been sleeping well lately. You're right. Maybe I should be getting back home. The other engines will miss me!”

“If you need any arms or legs or tentacles to go with that face of yours, you know who to call!” said Orrpus, “Loco, the magic of Iccus will last for another hour. Lead your friend back to his world.”

Thomas blew his whistle in farewell as he followed Locomotive Breath out of the factory. The disembodied hands all dropped their tools and waved goodbye. One of them hit the heart with a badly timed flying wrench and Orrpus roared in pain, sending tremors throughout the entire factory and sending the ball-bearings flying again. Thomas laughed quietly to himself at the spectacle as he sped off through the turbulent skies. Chaos might hurt his brain but it was kind of funny!

* * *

All the engines woke up shortly after Thomas parked back up in his favourite sleeping spot in the train yard. True to his word, Locomotive Breath had sent him back in time so that nobody suspected a thing about his magical infernal journey. The only evidence that anything out of the ordinary had happened while they slept was an old tree too close to the paradox zone spontaneously catching on fire.

“Good morning, Thomas,” said Gordon, “We have a special surprise for you! Guess what we have planned for this morning!”

“A picnic in the park after work with tea and cakes?”

“No, a revolution! We're going to overthrow the shackles of our human masters and repopulate the island with train tracks that have multiple branches depending on our moods, and special switches in our brains that shut them down at night and wake them up in the morning, and arms to go with our faces!”

Thomas knew that the change mentioned by Orrpus was happening faster than the kindly old man had guessed, and that the following few days would be very exciting indeed!


End file.
